Digital Commons Network^™

Learning At Lunch: A Qualitative Examination Of Lunchtime Discourse In Preschool Classrooms, Savanna Lynn Gragg

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This mixed-methods study examined how preschool teachers understand and use mealtime as an opportunity for children’s learning and connection. The project explored teachers’ beliefs, observed mealtime practices, and used collaborative video reflection to examine how teachers’ perspectives and behaviors evolved over time. Over five weeks, mealtimes were recorded, transcribed, and analyzed alongside reflection sessions with the teacher. Using the Arkansas Child Development Early Learning Standards (CDELS) as a developmental lens, each mealtime interaction was coded for learning opportunities across domains such as language, literacy, social-emotional growth, and self-help skills. Findings indicated that as the teacher engaged in video-supported reflection, mealtime …

An Efficient Implementation Of Gibbs-Duhem Integration For Solid-Liquid Phase Coexistence In Binary Lennard-Jones System With Relevance To Aav Capsid Separation, Muhi Muntaka

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gene therapy using adeno-associated viruses (AAVs) holds promise for treating genetic diseases, but high manufacturing costs limit its widespread use. A major challenge is separating functional (full) AAV capsids from non-functional (empty) ones, which are produced in similar amounts and have nearly identical structures. Conventional purification methods, such as density gradient ultracentrifugation and chromatography, face drawbacks like low yield, poor scalability, and high cost, often requiring multi-step processes. Recently, selective crystallization has emerged as a promising alternative, offering improved efficiency, scalability, and product quality. However, optimizing this method requires a deep understanding of thermodynamic phase behavior in multicomponent systems. In …

From Phenology To Yield Zones: Functional Clustering Of Satellite Time Series For Crop Growth Monitoring, Ikram Morso

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Remote sensing and land surface phenology provide a strong basis for characterizing crop development, but their usefulness for within-field yield-zone delineation depends on whether crop development is analyzed as a phenological trajectory and whether the resulting zones are evaluated with spatially defensible statistics. These questions are especially relevant in soybean production because soybean is one of the most important row crops in the United States and the country’s dominant oilseed crop. This relevance is strong in Arkansas, where soybean is a major component of agricultural production. In soybean production, within-field yield variability reflects the combined influence of soil properties, stand …

Sel & Hil Integrations For Real-Time Cyber Threat Modeling, Risk Assessment, And Result Validation, Zachary Coel Harris

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The electrical power grid is one of the most critical infrastructure systems, with virtually every other critical system relying on its electricity to operate effectively [1]. One failure in the electrical grid can have cascading effects, reducing, or outright stopping the operation of services vital to people’s lives. Ensuring continuous availability of the electrical grid is vital. This constant need for availability poses a challenge to identify potential cyber-attacks and their impacts. The grid is constantly growing with the addition of DERs (Distributed Energy Resources). Common DERs, such as photovoltaic systems or wind farms, can provide primary or secondary generation …

Structural Relaxation In Glass-Forming Liquids At Extreme Pressure: Photon-Correlation Spectroscopy And Constrained Thermodynamic Surface Modeling, Kevin Wayne Lyon

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Structural relaxation in glass-forming liquids is strongly dependent on both temperature and pressure, yet direct measurement of structural α-relaxation under multi-gigapascal compression has remained experimentally challenging. This work extends depolarized photon correlation spectroscopy (DPCS) to pressures approaching 5 GPa in a diamond anvil cell, representing the highest-pressure implementation of this technique and enabling direct measurement of the structural α-relaxation in a pure liquid at extreme compression. This capability provides access to dynamical regimes previously unexplored by photon correlation spectroscopy and establishes a platform for probing glassy dynamics at high pressure. To describe these measurements, a constrained relaxation-time surface framework is …

From Data Digitization To Personalized Care: Deep Learning And Decision Analytics In Healthcare Systems, Ahla Ko

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation traces a progression from foundational data infrastructure to individualized clinical decision-making, developing and evaluating three computational frameworks that advance healthcare efficiency and personalization through deep learning and decision analytics. The first study presents an end-to-end pipeline for automated recognition of handwritten medical forms, addressing persistent challenges in health data digitization. Integrating a YOLO-based field detection model, a Convolutional Recurrent Neural Network (CRNN) for text transcription, and a confidence-based human-in-the-loop quality assurance framework, the system achieved 99.75\% Exact Match Accuracy and a 0.13\% Character Error Rate on medical forms collected from a tuberculosis research project in Moldova. A GPU-accelerated …

Solid Embedded Telemetry, Pranav Balasubramanian Natarajan

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the integration of the Solid decentralized data framework within embedded and legacy energy control systems to enable secure, access-controlled, and interoperable data exchange. Two implementations were developed to evaluate Solid’s practical applicability: an ESP32 client implementing Solid-OIDC authentication and telemetry publication to a Solid Pod, and a Modbus-to-Solid bridge translating Modbus RTU communications into RDF-based data for bidirectional control. Experimental evaluation highlighted the effects of task scheduling and blocking operations on the ESP32, and polling-based communication latency within the Modbus bridge. These findings reveal the architectural and computational trade-offs involved in extending Solid to constrained or protocol-bound …

Effects Of Wetting And Drying On Nutrient Mobilization In Aquatic Systems, Karessa Grace De La Paz

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Wetting and drying cycles are a fundamental, but underexplored, control on nutrient mobilization and transport in aquatic ecosystems. Such intermittency impacts approximately 60% of the world's streams and rivers, and the extent is expected to increase with future climate change. Additionally, aging reservoir infrastructure is driving restoration efforts, like large-scale drawdowns, that can expose benthic sediments to extended dry periods before refilling. Despite the prevalence of wet-dry cycles, how they influence nutrient transport and mobilization across different aquatic ecosystems remains poorly understood. To address this gap, this thesis presents two complementary studies exploring nutrient dynamics in Arkansas aquatic ecosystems that …

A Spatial Analysis Of Socioeconomic Characteristics And Community Vulnerability To Natural Hazards In Arkansas, Emma Steuber, Brad Peter

Geosciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Natural hazards have become more frequent in recent years, and because of their destructive impacts, it is crucial to locate regions that are most affected historically by hazardous events and identify what socioeconomic characteristics co-occur spatially. While many studies have analyzed this relationship at national and state scales, few have focused specifically on Arkansas, and even fewer have incorporated multiple socioeconomic characteristics. Comparing the spatial distribution of community characteristics in Arkansas with zones of common natural hazards is essential for identifying who is most at risk. This study utilizes Geographic Information Science (GISci) to examine and map the spatial relationship …

Survival Patterns Among Adult And Pediatric Bone Cancer Patients, Ethan Estes

Mathematical Sciences Undergraduate Honors Theses

Recently noted, Huang et al. (2023), machine learning (ML) models, while offering great advantages over traditional statistical predictive modeling methods, are less explored in the analysis of survival and other similar time-to-event predictive data modeling. ML methods such as neural networks offer a great deal of promise but need to be further explored to investigate their comparative power in predicting survival outcomes. Focusing specifically on survival analysis in adult and pediatric bone cancer patients, traditional methods, like shown in Emmert-Streib and Dehmer (2019), will be shown with machine learning models using methods in Hothorn, Hornik, and Zeileis (2006). In this …

Creating Space For Pleasure: The Effects Of Alternative Reading Environments On Secondary Students' Reading Attitudes, Kari Rushmer

Master of Education Program Theses

This study examined how dedicated, free-choice reading time influenced student perceptions of and enjoyment of reading in a 10th-grade classroom. The purpose of the study was to determine whether providing weekly free-choice reading time within a comfortable, book-rich, library/café-style environment influenced reading enjoyment among 10th-grade students. Results indicated modest positive shifts in students’ comfort in the reading environment and their desire for in-class reading time, with qualitative data suggesting an increase in students’ enjoyment of reading. These findings suggest that environmental factors and dedicated reading time may support increased student engagement, even over a short intervention period.

2026 Spring Commencement Program, The University Of West Alabama

Commencement Programs

No abstract provided.

Descriptive Analysis Of E-Commerce Sales Performance: An End-To-End Analytics Dashboard Using Postgresql, Machine Learning, And Natural Language Querying, Bruno Valdez

Theses & ETDs

E-commerce businesses collect large amounts of transaction data every day, but most companies do not have the right tools to turn that data into useful decisions. Managers either rely on intuition or need a data scientist to answer every question. This thesis presents the design and development of an analytics dashboard that tries to close that gap. The platform combines descriptive analysis, predictive modeling, and natural language querying in a single interactive application built with Streamlit and PostgreSQL. The dashboard has five analytical modules. The Sales Overview and Category Explorer shows high-level business metrics alongside customer demographics and channel performance. …

A Step Into The Field Of Education : Sneak Peek Into My Career, Emma Reiser

Theses & ETDs

This senior project explored and reflected on my development as an aspiring educator through academic research and hands-on classroom experience. The goal of this project was to gain a deeper understanding of the teaching profession and to better prepare for a future career in education. To accomplish this, I combined a literature review of key educational concepts with an internship at an elementary school, where I observed and participated in classroom instruction under the guidance of a mentor teacher. The literature review focuses on the foundational components of effective teaching in education, including, teacher responsibilities, classroom management, parent–teacher relationships, pedagogy …

Cognitive Crossroads : A Dual Task Validation Study, Saiyid "Ali" Shariq

Theses & ETDs

The modern environment places constant demands on human attention, yet cognitive capacity remains fundamentally limited. This study investigated whether combining a visual memory task with a concurrent auditory vigilance task in the Psychology Experiment Building Language (PEBL) platform would function as a valid dual-task paradigm capable of producing measurable divided-attention costs. Thirty college students (ages 18–22, M = 20.47) completed three counterbalanced conditions: a memory automaticity task, an auditory vigilance task requiring spacebar responses to irregularly timed tones, and a dual-task condition combining both. Reaction time and accuracy served as dependent measures, analyzed using four paired-samples t-tests. Results revealed significant …

The Integrity Paradox: Reflections On Epistemic Substitution And The Ethical Failure Of Plagiarism Detection Systems, Elliott Ostler, Jeanne Surface

Journal of Educational Leadership in Action

This article critiques the ethical authority granted to AI plagiarism detection systems, using humor to expose a serious contradiction in these algorithms. Through a case in which an original ethics manuscript is labeled 40.7% “non-original,” the authors argue that similarity scores are mistaken for judgments of misconduct. They introduce the concept of “epistemic substitution” to describe how tools that both judge originality and offer AI rewrites replace human authorship while mandating human accountability. The paper contends that this collapse of roles undermines scholarly integrity, conflates disciplinary fluency with plagiarism, and shifts ethical responsibility from humans to procedures. The authors call …

Geospatial Science And The Changing Environment: Applied Methods For Sustainable Agriculture And Landscape Management, Harrison Wakefield Smith

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Rapid environmental change is disrupting agricultural productivity, ecological function, and the long-term resilience of managed landscapes. At the same time, the rapid growth of geospatial data science has improved our understanding of environmental change and increasingly is being used to improve sustainability in agricultural and environmental management. However, critical gaps remain that limit the applicability of data-driven insights in landscape management. This dissertation investigates the potential of geospatial analytics for sustainable agriculture and landscape management, with a focus on applied methods that operate across spatial and temporal scales. Using field, landscape, regional, and national datasets, it explores the capabilities and …

Bethel Zegeye Honors Portfolio, Bethel Zegeye

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Bethel Zegeye's honors capstone portfolio captured in May 2026.

Brock Nielsen Honors Portfolio, Brock Nielsen

Honors Capstone Portfolios

Brock Nielsen's honors capstone portfolio captured in May 2026.

Beyond Student Voice: The Agency Blueprint For Democratic Inquiry And Creative Problem Solving, Noam Oren

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

The purpose of this Master of Science project in Creativity and Change Leadership is to establish a foundational framework for schools to cultivate a climate that empowers students to act and create within their communities. The primary contribution is the Agency Blueprint, a scalable model designed to adapt to diverse educational settings. By synthesizing the four-stage Creative Problem Solving (CPS) framework with Democratic pedagogy, the blueprint—supported by the Lundy Model and the REAL framework—provides the necessary scaffolding for students to transition from passive subjects to active agents of change. Whether implemented for a small cohort or a larger student body, …

Cultivating Well-Being & Vibrant Futures Through Creativity: A Community-Based Library Initiative In Rural America, Alyssa M. Bump

Creativity and Change Leadership Graduate Student Master's Projects

Cultivating Well-Being & Vibrant Futures Through Creativity: A Community-Based Library Initiative in Rural America presents the development and design of a creativity-based community program for public libraries in Allegany County, New York. Developed in partnership with the Allegany County Area Foundation (ACAF), this project aims to foster creativity as a tool for well-being, connection, and future-oriented thinking for adults in a rural context.

The program consists of a three-session series that integrate elements of Creative Problem-Solving (CPS), mindfulness, and creative well-being practices to support creative self-efficacy. Designed utilizing the Torrance Incubation Model of Teaching and Learning (TIM), each session aims …

Anaerobic Co-Digestion Of Goat Manure With Rice Residue To Maximize Biomethane Recovery, Mahmoud Nabil Soliman

All Theses

Anaerobic digestion (AD) is a widely adopted waste‑management technology and a key process for renewable energy production in the form of biogas. Manures, such as goat manure (GM), often exhibit low carbon‑to‑nitrogen (C/N) ratios, which may limit biogas recovery. This study evaluated and optimized the anaerobic co‑digestion of GM with rice husk (RH) and rice straw (RS) across varying substrate proportions (0–100% GM). Goat manure was collected from the International Goat Research Center at Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU), while RH and RS were obtained from Gulf Pacific Co. (Houston, TX), and the inoculum was sourced from the PVAMU wastewater …

Atmospheric Remote Sensing Using X-Band Radar In The Marine Atmospheric Surface Layer, Daniel P. Greenway

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Atmospheric remote sensors have always offered promising technological advancements for measuring atmospheric properties over large spatial areas at high spatiotemporal resolution – a feat not currently possible with present atmospheric measurement technologies. However, remote sensors do not measure these atmospheric properties directly; they rely on robust calibrations or conversions, complex mathematical inversion methods, and/or machine learning to retrieve these properties. These inverse methods rely on the selection of an objective function, a machine learning technique, and an accurate parameterization for atmospheric property estimation. By leveraging inverse methods to improve the characterization of properties measured by remote sensors, this work enables …

Leveraging Data Analytics For Student Success: Lessons From Building An Analytics Program At Bentley University, Jane De Leon Griffin, Edlira Stefani, Rahat Sabyrbekov, Patrick Dickson, Annie Raunikar

Student Success Publications

Higher education institutions across the United States face an unprecedented convergence of challenges: a shrinking pool of college-aged students, persistent learning gaps from the COVID-19 pandemic, the destabilization of longstanding federal support structures, and the rising cost of attendance, which increases public skepticism about the value of higher education and challenges access for low-income learners. In this environment, student success is no longer simply a strategic priority—it is an institutional imperative.

One way in which Bentley University has responded to these pressures is by launching the Building a Data-Driven Student Success Ecosystem (BaSSE) initiative, a comprehensive analytics program designed to …

The Conceptual Practitioner, Tincuta Heinzel

DRS Summer Meetings

No abstract provided.

Geographic Bias In Ai: How Llm Outputs Vary By Location, Alekya Bongu

RhetTech

This paper explores the inherent biases present in Large Language Model (LLM) outputs. As AI use becomes more widespread, it is extremely important to examine the implicit biases in these models, as AI will only perpetuate inaccuracies. By understanding the implications of using AI, we can use it in a way that causes the least harm. Using Hofstede’s cultural onion to structure research questions, I tested four LLMs—ChatGPT, Pi.ai, Qwen, and DeepSeek—across three different geographic locations: the United States, India, and Ireland. The findings demonstrate that while LLMs can adjust some content based on a user’s location, they frequently default …

I Wrote Myself Awake: A Personal Encounter With A/R/Tography, Michelle Geipel

Theses

This project and its accompanying short story function as visual and narrative representations of a/r/tography, demonstrating how creative practice can be used to explore and construct personal meaning through writing and art-making. The co-written story exists alongside the altered book as evidence of how the creative process not only engages the brain through neuroplasticity, but also supports meaning-making and the formation or discovery of identity. Through the integration of life writing, visual art, and reflective inquiry, this work illustrates how understanding can emerge from within the act of creation itself.

User-Centered Design For Public Financial Services: A Federal Student Loan Management App Case Study, Carmen River Christopher

Theses

Researchers have studied several facets of federal student loans, such as the impacts it has on borrowers’ finances, mentality, and life goals, plus the history of the federal student system and potential changes. There has been little research conducted on how borrowers make decisions regarding repayment, including choosing plans, navigating the repayment system, and understanding the long term implications of their choices. Since this research largely does not exist, there are few tools and resources to help guide borrowers as they manage the large, complex, and dynamic landscape that is navigating the federal loan system and repaying their debt. I …

Analyzing Comparisons Of Seascapes By Caspar David Friedrich And Fitz Henry Lane Through A Digital Gallery Show, Adrianna Murphy

Theses

This project focuses on a comparative digital exhibition and analysis between Caspar David Friedrich and Fitz Henry Lane’s seascape artwork. Both artists have not been shown together in a gallery; thus this research into common themes in their works reveals a new perspective on early- to mid-19th-century seascape art. This perspective shows how their different geographies and historical contexts converge through the shared visual language of contemplation, morality, and reflecting in the mystery of life through nature. The project aims to create a digital gallery that showcases an ideal layout and a comparison of the artists, with curated works that …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center News, May 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- P2 Green Brewery Webinar #2 Registration
--- Solid Waste Educators Meeting
--- Farewell Interns
--- Energy Efficiency Resources
--- Industry News